ReKnew

Why Your Imagination Matters

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The flesh, which we discussed in this post earlier this week, is shaped by Satan’s web of deception that deeply infects our imaginations. This is why it has such power to move us to perform…

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2 Ways We Misinterpret God’s Promises

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In the church where I first found Christ, we used to sing a hymn called “Standing on the Promises of God.” The hymn itself isn’t bad, for it focuses entirely on our relationship with God….

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God’s Regrets and Divine Foreknowledge

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One aspect of the portrait of God in Scripture that suggests the future is partly open is the fact that God sometimes regrets how things turn out, even prior decisions that he himself made. For…

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Why Do Christians Keep Struggling With Sin?

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If we truly are righteous in Christ Jesus (see Earlier Post about our identity in Christ), why do we need to be reminded to live righteous lives? If we are new creations and have a…

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How People Misunderstand Open Theism

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Open theism holds that, because agents are free, the future includes possibilities (what agents may and may not choose to do). Since God’s knowledge is perfect, open theists hold that God knows the future partly as a realm of…

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9 Reasons Faith ≠ Certainty

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One of the things that Christians typically believe in and that I’ve struggled with a great deal is the concept of faith. Like most Christians, I once assumed a person’s faith is as strong as…

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Did Jesus Believe in Satan?

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Jesus’ teaching, his exorcisms, his healings and other miracles, as well as his work on the cross, all remain somewhat incoherent and unrelated to one another until we interpret them as acts of war. As…

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6 Things the Church Fathers Can Teach Us about Spiritual Warfare

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Image by Christina Saint Marche via Flickr Unlike our thinking today about the source of good and evil in the world, the early church fathers, including Irenaus, Athenagorus, Origen, and others before Augustine, possessed a warfare…

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What Does It Mean that God Hardens Hearts?

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Some argue that passages which speak of God hardening human hearts (Jos 11:19-20; Ex 7:3; 10:1; Rom 9:18) demonstrate that God controls everything, including people resistant to this declared intentions. He hardens whomever he wills,…

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Atonement: What is the Christus Victor View?

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Most western Christians today understand the atonement as a sort of legal-transaction that took place between the Father and the Son that got humanity “off the hook.” The legal-transaction scenario goes something like this: God’s…

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Are Christians Required to Give 10% of Their Income to the Church?

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Question: I and my husband have become increasingly uncomfortable with the many sermons on tithing we’ve been recently hearing at our church. Our pastor insists we tithe 10% to the church regardless of what else we…

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What We’re Up Against

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Though Jesus dealt a final blow to Satan’s kingdom through the cross and resurrection, the New Testament makes it clear that Satan is still viewed as the “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), “the…

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The Nature of Temptation

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How does temptation work? Based on James 1:13-16, Greg unpacks the way that desire can give birth to sin. But desire is actually rooted in our longing for God, and the desire itself—and therefore the…

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Challenging the Habit of Judgment

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Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”…

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A Cross-Like Church

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When God’s church loves like God loves—which means valuing the other at cost to self—it will puzzle those outside the church. While such love might cause the religious to rail with outrage, it will cause…

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When We Talk Politics

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In this clip, Greg identifies a source of much of the conflict we experience in our conversations about politics, or other important topics. He does this by introducing the phrase, “your map is not the…

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God’s Dream for the World

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One of the grandest expressions of non-violent nature of God is found in Isaiah 11. Here God is dreaming of a time when his creation would be entirely free of violence. “The wolf will live…

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The Secret

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I Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Most Americans define themselves as distinctly unhappy. Why is…

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A Step Toward Racial Reconciliation

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In this sermon clip, Greg, as a representative of a white man in America, asks for forgiveness of people of color for all the harm that white America has done. This is not about disparaging…

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Revolting Beauty

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In this sermon clip, Greg shares the story of how foster parents entered into the pain of a severely abused child and demonstrated compassion rather than judgment when she displayed puzzling and revolting behaviors. This…

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